billionaire Elon Musk He repeated his warning of a potential global population collapse as the world’s most populous country reported its first population decline in recent years.
What happened: On Wednesday, Musk took to Twitter to once again warn his followers that the world’s population was shrinking as China’s workforce fell for the first time in 60 years last year.
“Depopulation is a huge danger to the future of civilization!” Musk wrote, replying to a tweet about China by American internet entrepreneur Jason Karakanis.
Musk’s comments were prompted by national data from Beijing that showed the Asian country had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than in 2021.
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The data published by National Statistics Office It marked its first decline since 1961 on Tuesday — the last year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong.
About 9.5 million babies will be born in 2022, down from 10.62 million in the same period in 2021. This number is the lowest since at least his 1950s, despite the Xi Jinping administration encouraging families to have more children.
Mortality rates in China are also rising, with a total of 10.41 million deaths in 2022, up from nearly 10 million recorded in recent years.
In August last year, Mr. Musk warned that “depopulation due to declining birth rates poses a far greater risk to civilization than global warming.” “People are living longer. That’s the only reason the planet’s population hasn’t plummeted,” he said in a podcast.
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